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AN ADDRESS 



AN 

ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT WORCESTER 
OCTOBER 16, 1912 

BEFORE THE 

;american ;anttquarian S)OCtetp 

ON THE OCCASION OF THE 

ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF ITS 

FOUJVDJTIOJV 



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BY 

CHARLES G. WASHBURN 



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BOSTON 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 
1912 



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D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston 



ADDRESS 

We are gathered here to-day, surrounded by the 
memorials and records of the past, to celebrate the 
centennial anniversary of this Society. The last sur- 
vivor of the charter members died more than forty 
years ago, and yet through that wonderful art of 
photographing the thoughts and deeds of men upon 
the printed page, he and they, together with the 
others who have gone before, are a real and sub- 
stantial part of this living company met 

'■'•To celebrate a Century' s fiight 
And gather ere it disappears 
The harvest of a hundred years" 

While the Society was founded one hundred years 
ago, the activities of its distinguished patron and 
his associates extended over a period which began 
before the Revolution. Those who signed the pe- 
tition for incorporation, in the order in which the 
names appear, were : Isaiah Thomas ; Nathaniel 
Paine ; Dr. William Paine, his elder brother ; Levi 
Lincoln, Sr. ; Aaron Bancroft ; and Edward Bangs. 
Every detail of the fruitful life of Isaiah Thomas has 
been noticed in the jjroceedings from the time when, 
at the tender age of six years, he was bound as 
apprentice in 1755 to Zachariah Fowle, a printer, 
of Boston, until his death in Worcester in 1831 at 
the age of eighty-two. 

Mr. Thomas was not only a printer and pub- 
lisher, but a book-binder and paper-maker, and his 
business extended all over the country. He was, 



[ 6 ] 

too, a man of great public spirit, and his gifts to 
this community were numerous and substantial. 
Brissot de Warville, one of the leading spirits of 
the Girondists and a celebrated writer of his day, 
who visited this country in 1788, "not," he says, 
"to study antiques, or to search for unknown plants, 
but to study men who had just acquired their lib- 
erty," writes of Worcester : ' ' This town is elegant 
and well-peopled; the printer, Isaiah Thomas, has 
rendered it famous through all the continent. He 
prints most of the works which appear ; and it must 
be granted, that his editions are correct. Thomas is 
the Didot of the United States." 

Nathaniel Paine, lawyer, graduated from Har- 
vard College in 1775. He was, for a time, prose- 
cuting attorney for the county, and represented 
Worcester in the legislature for three years. He was 
Judge of Probate for thirty-five years. 

Dr. William Paine, his elder brother, graduated 
from Harvard College in 1768. One of his early in- 
structors was John Adams, in 1775 teacher of the 
grammar school in Worcester, who writes in his 
diary: "The situation of the town is quite pleasant 
and the inhabitants, as far as I have had opportunity 
to know their character, are a sociable, generous and 
hospitable people ; but the school is indeed a school 
of affliction, a large number of litde runtlings, just 
capable of lisping ABC and troubling the master. 
But Dr. Savil tells me for my comfort ' by cultivat- 
ing and pruning these tender plants in the garden 
of Worcester, I shall make some of them plants of 



[ 7 ] 

renown and cedars of Lebanon. ' " Upon his arrival 
from England, after the war broke out, Dr. Paine 
found himself denounced as a royalist and did not 
return to Worcester until 1792, where he lived until 
his death, highly respected as a citizen and a phy- 
sician. 

Levi Lincoln, lawyer, graduated from Harvard 
College in 1772; marched as a volunteer with the 
minute-men to Cambridge; was an active mem- 
ber of the committees of the Revolution, Clerk of 
Courts, Judge of Probate, delegate to the conven- 
tion at Cambridge for framing a state constitution, 
member of the legislature, representative in Con- 
gress, Attorney-General of the United States and 
provisional Secretary of State in the Cabinet of 
Thomas Jefferson, lieutenant-governor and acting 
governor of this Commonwealth, and associate jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Such 
is a brief summary of his great career which termi- 
nated in 1820. 

Aaron Bancroft, clergyman, historian, graduated 
from Harvard College in 1778, minister of the Sec- 
ond Parish in Worcester for more than fifty years, 
father of George Bancroft. In 1832 Dr. Bancroft 
sent to John Adams a volume of his sermons, in 
acknowledgment of which Mr. Adams wrote: "I 
thank you ... for the gift of a precious volume. 
It is a chain of diamonds set with links of gold. 
I have never read nor heard read a volume of ser- 
mons better calculated and adapted to the age and 
country in which it was written. How different from 



[ 8 ] 

the sermons I heard and read in the town of Worces- 
ter from the year 1755 to 1758." 

Edward Bangs left Harvard College to partici- 
pate in the Concord fight, graduated in 1777, read 
law in the office of Chief Justice Parsons, served as 
a volunteer in the suppression of Shays 's rebellion, 
M^as representative in the General Court, associate 
justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and an ac- 
complished scholar in literature. 

The petition to the Legislature for incorpora- 
tion states of the Society that : "Its immediate and 
peculiar design is to discover the antiquities of our 
continent, and by providing a fixed and permanent 
place of deposit, to preserve such relics of American 
Antiquity as are portable, as well as to collect and 
preserve those of other parts of the globe. By the long 
and successful labors of the College of Antiquaries in 
Ireland (probably the most ancient institution now 
existing in the world), their historians have been en- 
abled to trace the history of that country to an earlier 
period than that of any other nation in Europe." 

Mention is made in the ancient annals of an early 
society in Ireland, but the Society of Antiquaries 
of London, incorporated in 1753 and succeeding a 
similar society formed in 1572, is the premier society 
for the study of antiquities. In this country, the Phi- 
losophical Society of Philadelphia was founded in 
1 743 ; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
in 1780; the Massachusetts Historical Society in 
1791. 

The act of incorporation was signed by Governor 



[ 9 ] 

Caleb Strong on October 24,1812. The incorporators 
were : Isaiah Thomas, Levi Lincohi, Harrison G. 
Otis, Timoth}^ Bigelow, Nathaniel Paine, Edward 
Bangs, Esqrs. ; JohnT.Kirkland, D.D. ; Aaron Ban- 
croft, D.D. ; Jonathan H. Lyman, Elijah H. Mills, 
Elisha Hammond, Timothy Williams, William 
D. Peck, John Lowell, Edmund Dwight, Eleazer 
James, Josiah Quincy, William S. Shaw, Francis 
Blake, Levi Lincoln, Jr.; Samuel M. Burnsideand 
Benjamin Russell, Esqrs. ; Rev. Thaddeus M. Har- 
ris, Redford Webster, Thomas Walcut, Ebenezer 
T. Andrews, Isaiah Thomas, Jr. ; William Wells. 
The amount of the annual income from real estate 
was limited to $1500, and the personal estate was 
limited to the value of $7000. 

The first meeting of the Society was called for 
Thursday, November 19, 1812, at the Exchange 
Coffee House in Boston, where less than three months 
before Captain Isaac Hull had been banqueted be- 
cause of the victory of the Constitution over the 
Guerriere. A committee was appointed to draw up 
regulations and by-laws, to report at the next meet- 
ing, at which the president, Isaiah Thomas, pre- 
sented the Society with a large and valuable collec- 
tion of books valued at $4000. He was requested 
to retain possession of them until a place of deposit 
could be provided for their reception, and they were 
kept at his house on Court Hill for a period of eight 
years. 

The by-laws provided for three meetings annu- 
ally : one in Boston on December 22 and again on 



[ 10 ] 

the first Wednesday in June, and one in Worces- 
ter on the Wednesday next after the fourth Tues- 
day of September, and that an oration should be 
deUvered at the December meeting ; but later this 
was so far altered as to provide for holding the 
annual meeting on October 23, the day on which 
America was believed to have been discovered by 
Columbus. 

Thus, as Mr. Haven, for so many years the ac- 
complished librarian, once stated: "At the organi- 
zation of this Society, the day upon which Columbus 
first set foot on the shores of the Western World 
was selected for the commemoration of its anniver- 
saries, as the beginning of the civilized history of this 
continent, and the unsealing of its archaeological 
mysteries to the eyes of enlightened nations. The 
day was also chosen in honor of the great discoverer, 
to whose religious imagination the vessel that bore 
him was an ark of salvation, and himself (Colum- 
bus, the dove) a messenger of the Christian faith ; not 
only Columbus, but Christopher — Christo-ferens, as 
he was wont to sign his name to public documents, 
with a fond conviction of its mystical meaning, — 
Christ-bearing, or the Christ-bearer, — divinely ap- 
pointed and inspired for the fulfilment of prophecy." 
A desire to have the annual meeting held upon the 
actual date led to the ascertainment of the fact that 
Columbus made his discovery on the morning of the 
29th day after the autumnal equinox, which now 
falls upon October 21. 

The first meeting in Worcester was held ' ' at the 



[ 11 ] 

dwelling of Col. Reuben Sikes, innholder, Sept. 29, 
1813." This was Sikes's Coftee House, still stand- 
ing on Main Street, and now known as Exchange 
Hotel. Both Washington and Lafayette have been 
entertained there, and it was for many years the 
home of visiting members of the bench and bar. On 
October 23, 1813, the Society celebrated at the 
Exchange Coffee House in Boston, the landing of 
Columbus, and after the business meeting marched 
to the Stone Chapel — King's Chapel — and listened 
to " an ingenious and learned address" by the Rev- 
erend Professor William Jenks of Bowdoin College. 

The Boston meetings were held at the Exchange 
Coifee House until 1818, when it was destroyed by 
fire, in 1819 at Forster's Tavern, and in 1820 at 
the Marlborough Hotel. In 1821 the Society re- 
turned to the Exchange Coffee House, which had 
been rebuilt, and continued the meetings there for 
fifteen years. From May, 1836, to May, 1847, the 
Boston meetings were held at the Tremont House. 
Two Doric columns of granite from the portico of 
the Tremont House now stand in Institute Park near 
this building. From 1847 until April, 1900, when 
the Society met in Ellis Hall, the Boston meetings 
were held in the rooms of the American Academy. 

Mr. Thomas provided, at his own expense, a 
building on Summer Street for the use of the Society, 
which was formally opened on Thursday, August 
24, 1820. The members met at 10 o'clock in the 
morning, and marched at 1 1 o'clock to the North 
Meeting House on the adjoining lot, where the ser- 



[ 12 ] 

vices were opened with prayer by Dr. Bancroft. The 
address was delivered by Isaac Goodwin, Esq. , then 
a resident of Sterling. He dwelt upon the importance 
of preserving the annals of the human race, and con- 
gratulated the citizens of the country upon the event 
of the day. After the services, a sumptuous repast, as 
it is recorded, was provided at Sikes's Coffee House. 
The building was enlarged by the erection of two 
wings in 1831 ; and while the Society enjoyed it as 
fully as if it had been its own, no deed ever passed 
from the donor. He died April 4, 183 1 . His will con- 
tained a bequest to the Society of $30,000, and the 
following clause : " I give to said Society, (provided 
I shall not before my death execute a deed thereof,) 
and their successors forever, that tract of land in 
Worcester whereon is now erected a building for 
the use of said Society, which land is purchased 
of Samuel Chandler's heirs, containing about one 
acre near the Second Parish, with the said building 
thereon ; which building is to be forever sacredly 
appropriated as long as said Society shall exist ; for 
the library, cabinet, &c. of said Society; and the 
house and building are accordingly devised upon this 
express condition . And in case said Society shall at 
any time cease to use said building for said purpose, 
then the whole of this estate is to revert to my grand- 
children generally and their heirs." Mr. Thomas, in 
his will, further declared that he valued this real 
estate at $8000. He left to the Society $10,000 in 
books from his private collection and $12,000 in 
money, to make up the w^hole legacy of $30,000. 



[ 13 ] 

It was found necessary, in 1850, to erect a new 
building, to provide necessary room and to escape 
the dampness of the original location, A lot of land, 
next north of the old Court House on Main Street, 
was generously given by Stephen Salisbury for this 
purpose. Later he added a subscription of $5000 
to the building fund. This building, with additions, 
was the home of the Society until the present build- 
ing was occupied in 1911. In speaking of it once, 
Mr. Salisbury said: "It presented such a coura- 
geous contrast to the prevailing modern style of 
decorating buildings with a profusion of projec- 
tions, that a storm of hasty criticism arose, which 
at first so disheartened some of the best friends of 
the Society, that they could only repeatTouchstone's 
apology for the choice of his wife: " An ill-favored 
thing, sir; but mine own." The old building and 
lot on Summer Street was sold to the trustees of 
the Worcester Academy. Before this could be done, 
however, the consent of the Thomas heirs had to be 
obtained, as the will had provided that, if the real 
estate should cease to be occupied for the purposes 
of the Society, it should revert to them. In com- 
menting upon this, our late associate. Senator George 
Frisbie Hoar, once said: "I remember a very en- 
tertaining fact about that, which shows the habits 
and motives that affected ladies in the time when 
Dr. Hale and myself were young. I was a student 
in Judge Thomas's office at that time, or had just 
been, and had an office next door to his. He took 
great interest in the new hall, and in having this old 



[ u ] 

estate which his grandfather had given, quitclaimed 
to the Society. It required the assent of all the heirs ; 
otherwise we should forfeit the property. They got 
the assent of all the heirs but one lady, a cousin of 
the Judge, living in a neighboring town. She would 
not give hers. No offer of money and no persua- 
sion could get her signature. At last the Judge was 
asked to take the matter in hand. He went to see her. 
If anybody then living could ' laugh on a lass with 
his bonny blue eye,' it was Ben Thomas. He came 
back exultant, and reported his success to the office. 
He said he had tried to persuade her, and spent the 
whole afternoon talking to her ; she said no, that her 
grandfather Thomas meant to have the property 
left in that way ; and she would not sign . He told 
her that all the other heirs had assented ; well, she 
didn't care about that; he told her she could have 
almost any sum of money she would name. All was 
without avail. At last, just as he was going off, he 
said, 'My dear cousin, if you will sign that deed, 
you shall have the handsomest silk gown there is 
in Millbury ; ' and she signed it." 

The Society began its existence in a period of 
wars, both abroad and at home. Europe, in 1812, 
was overshadowed by Napoleon. He had staked 
everything on the Continental System, and had 
united all Europe in the crusade against England. 
We had begun our war with England in June, three 
days after Wellington commenced the Salamanca 
campaign, and six days after Napoleon passed the 
Niemen on his way to Moscow — a campaign for 



[ IS ] 

which he had been preparmg since 1807. The Rev. 
George Allen, for many years minister in Shrews- 
bury, brother of Charles Allen so distinguished in 
this community in his day, was at that time a stu- 
dent in Yale College ; and the expedition of Napoleon 
to Russia, as, I am informed, he told the story, was 
a subject of absorbing interest. One day he found 
a fellow student lying at full length on a barn floor 
studying the map of Europe. He was in a state of 
great excitement over Napoleon's progress into the 
heart of Russia. "He will be ruined! He will be 
ruined! " he cried. "He will be drawn into the in- 
terior of Russia, and the cold will do the rest; his 
army will be destroyed in the retreat." Napoleon's 
army, warned by the frost of its impending fate, 
began the retreat from Moscow five days before 
the date of incorporation of this Society. 

When the news came of the overthrow of Napo- 
leon, President D wight read, at college prayers, the 
fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, from the twelfth to the 
twenty-third verse. The twelfth verse runs as fol- 
lows : "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, 
son of the morning ! how art thou cut down to the 
ground, which didst weaken the nations!" And 
the tAventy-second verse: "For I will rise up against 
them, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut ofl'from Baby- 
lon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, 
saith the Lord." 

The War of 1812 — Mr. Madison's war, as it was 
called — was not popular in Massachusetts, but al- 
though every northern state excepting Pennsylvania 



[ 16 ] 

and Vermont voted for De Witt Clinton, Madison 
was elected for a second term. 

In 1808, when the feeling in New England was 
so hostile to the embargo, but eight thousand spin- 
dles were employed in the spinning of cotton ; in 
1815 there were five hundred thousand. In 1814 
Mr. Francis Lowell of Boston had set up at Wal- 
tham the first factory ever established in which every 
process, from cleaning and carding to weaving, was 
carried on under a single roof. It w as never intended 
by the mother country that her New England colony 
should engage in manufacturing. The Earl of Chat- 
ham once said that the "colonists had no right to 
manufacture as much as a single horse-shoe nail." 

That our people at that time had no idea that we 
would ever become a great manufacturing nation 
is evidenced by correspondence between Benjamin 
Franklin and John Adams in 1 780, in which Franklin 
said : ' ' America will not make manufactures enough 
for her own consumption this thousand years. ' ' And 
Adams replied: "The principal interest of Amer- 
ica for many centuries to come will be landed and 
our chief occupation agriculture. Manufactures and 
commerce will be but secondary objects and always 
subservient to the other." 

Also both abroad and at home there was a feeling 
of skepticism in regard to the introduction of mechan- 
ical improvements. At the beginning of the century 
the Academy of Science in France, when consulted 
by Napoleon as to the steamboat, spoke of it as a 
"mad idea, a gross error, an absurdity." When 



[ 17 ] 

Fulton's first steamboat made the trip from New 
York to Albany, on the 17th of August, 1807, it 
caused many preachers to curse the machine on the 
ground that seventeen was the total of the horns and 
the seven heads of the beast of the Apocalypse. 

Returning to local conditions, the population of 
Worcester in 1810 was about twenty-five hundred, 
and it was not until 1820 that it became the largest 
of the towns in the county. For a long time the only 
stages from Worcester were six each week to Boston 
and six each week to New York. 

Such, in a general way, were the conditions, for- 
eign and domestic, at the time of the organization 
of this Society. Its nature and objects were very fully 
set forth by Mr. Thomas, reporting for a committee 
appointed for that purpose at the meeting held at the 
Exchange Coffee House in Boston on October 23, 
1813, when he said that it appeared that one more 
Society for the promotion of literature, the useful and 
fine arts, and other valuable purposes might well be 
added to those already in existence, a society not con- 
fined to local purposes, nor intended for the particular 
advantage of any one state or section of the Union, 
one whose members might be found in every part of 
our western continent and its adjacent islands, and 
who are citizens of all parts of this quarter of the 
world. The intended objects of the Society were, in 
the words of Sir William Jones to the members of 
the Asiatic Society: "Man and Nature — whatever 
is, or has been performed by the one, or produced by 
the other, ' ' but were particularly the investigation of 



[ 18 ] 

American antiquities — natural, artificial, and liter- 
ary. Individual members were appealed to, to collect 
books of every description, including pamphlets and 
magazines, particularly those printed in North and 
SouthAmerica; newspapers, specimens and descrip- 
tions of fossils and handicrafts of the aborigines ; 
manuscripts, ancient and modern, particularly those 
giving accounts of remarkable events, discoveries, 
or the description of any part of the continent, or 
the islands in the American seas, maps, charts, etc. 
A few of the subjectsof especial interest to the Amer- 
ican antiquary mentioned were the ancient Indian 
nations of our continent, the western mounds of 
earth, the early European settlements, and European 
accessions of population in America. Because of the 
danger from fire in large towns and cities and from 
the ravages of enemies to which seaports were so 
much exposed in time of war, — and one was then 
being waged, — it was agreed that an inland situation 
was to be preferred for the location of the library and 
museum, and so Worcester was selected, forty miles 
distant from the nearest arm of the sea on the great 
road from all the southern and western states to 
Boston, the capital of New England. 

At this meeting a committee was appointed to 
adopt measures ' ' for obtaining accurate surveys of 
all the ancient mounds, whether fortifications or 
otherwise, in the Western part of the United States, 
and for collecting on the spot, all the facts and in- 
formation, which throw light on these interesting 
monuments of American Antiquity. " At the annual 



[ 19 ] 

meeting in 1819, it was stated that several com- 
munications had been made to the Society worthy 
of pubHcation — among them being minute and 
accurate surveys of many of the ancient mounds 
and fortifications of the western country, by Caleb 
Atwater, Esq., of Ohio, done at the request and 
by the pecuniary assistance of the president, Isa- 
iah Thomas. This led to the publication in 1820 
of a volume of Archaeology containing an account 
of Mr. Atwater 's researches among the ancient 
mounds, works of defence, and other remains in the 
west, illustrated by maps, plans, and drawings. 
The conclusions reached were that nothing discov- 
ered by the writer sustained the supposition that 
this region was once inhabited by a race of civilized 
men. 

At the annual meeting in 1835, it was reported 
that a second volume of papers relating to the objects 
for which the institution was founded was in press, 
and that the largest contribution was from the pen 
of Hon. Albert Gallatin, who, for many years, had 
been engaged in investigating the aboriginal lan- 
guages of the country. This volume contains "A 
Dissertation on Indian History and Languages," 
and Gookin's "History of the Praying Indians." 
Mr. Gallatin's contribution was devoted to a com- 
prehensive comparison of dialects. The fuller title 
of the work is the ' ' Synopsis of the Indian Tribes 
within the United States, east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in 
North America." The writing of this book and the 



[ 20 ] 

founding of the American Ethnological Society in 
1842 earned for him the name of ' ' Father of Amer- 
ican Ethnology." 

Albert Gallatin has a large place in our history. 
He was one of the founders of the Anti-Federalist 
party, elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania in 
1793, leader of the Anti-Federalists in the House 
in 1795, Secretary of the Treasury for twelve years, 
in Jefferson's Cabinet and in that of Madison, Min- 
ister to France. It was then, in 1823, that, at the 
request of Alexander Von Humboldt, — elected a 
member of the Society in 1816, — he drew up a Me- 
moir of the Indian languages which Humboldt pro- 
posed to annex to the second edition of his work on 
Mexico. Before Gallatin, Jefferson had collected and 
arranged the vocabularies of about fifty Indian lan- 
guages and dialects, and so deserved a place among 
the forerunners of the modern American school of 
comparative philologists. 

In 1850 the Society undertook the pubHcation 
from the original manuscript of the early records of 
the Massachusetts Bay Company and Colony, with 
annotations by Mr. Haven, the librarian. This im- 
portant work, so well begun, was continued under 
the auspices of the Commonwealth and under the 
editorial supervision of a member of the Society. 

About this time the attention of the Council had 
been drawn to a field of antiquarian research where 
it was supposed that interesting and curious dis- 
coveries might be made. The State of Wisconsin 
and the neighboring sections of the country had 



[ 21 ] 

within their limits a pecuHar class of mounds, dif- 
fering essentially from those found elsewhere. These 
had been denominated animal mounds, because their 
outlines exhibited the forms of various animals. 
Birds, beasts, and fishes were imitated in the shapes 
of these elevations, sometimes on a scale of such 
magnitude that it was only in the process of sur- 
veying that the forms were developed. Specimens 
of these singular works had been drawn by United 
States engineers engaged in surveying those regions, 
and some of them had been shown in the publica- 
tions of the Smithsonian Institution. But it was said 
that comparatively few of those known to exist had 
been explored and described, and that many more 
singular than those noticed remained to be deline- 
ated. It was supposed, also, that excavations, judi- 
ciously undertaken, would throw some light on the 
object of their erection, and would determine what 
relation they might bear, if any, to the earth- works 
of the valley of the Mississippi. The Council em- 
ployed Mr. I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee, experi- 
enced in topographical and other scientific surveys, 
for a tour of exploration among these mounds. 

Since the organization of the Society, associations 
of a kindred nature had sprung up all over the coun- 
try, devoted to archaeological research, and the field 
which was almost unoccupied at that time became 
full of workers. Private collections and amateur anti- 
quaries had greatly increased in numbers. This was 
also true in Great Britain, where the British Ar- 
chaeological Association was organized in 1843 to 



[ 22 ] 

include such archaeologists as could not be provided 
for in the older society of antiquaries. In Ireland the 
Irish Archaeological Society was founded in 1840; 
the revival of the study spread through the coun- 
try, and many societies were organized. Among the 
causes which it was said led to this revival was 
the Romantic Movement in literature towards the 
end of the eighteenth century. Its great inspiring 
spirit was Walter Scott, whose ' ' Border Minstrelsy ' ' 
and other works cast a glamour over past times. We 
have all delighted in the pages of ' ' The Antiquary, ' ' 
in the character of Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck and his 
antiquarian pursuits, whose vagaries Scott holds 
up to gentle ridicule as tending to bring serious 
antiquarian research into disrepute. 

The wanton neglect of the memorials of earlier 
times has often been commented upon. It is related 
that several pictures of Correggiowereusedat Stock- 
holm to stop the broken windows of the royal stables, 
and that a portrait of one of the most illustrious 
of the fathers of New England, now in one of our 
American colleges, was once employed for a simi- 
lar purpose. Indeed, it is unhappily true that the 
destruction of ancient monuments is more largely 
due to the vandalism of man than to the ravages 
of time. I was interested, some years ago, when in 
the Nile valley, to observe that the obelisks were 
quarried from a coarse grained pink granite, so 
coarse, indeed, that it chipped readily. It was easy 
to see that such a stone might endure for ages in a 
climate like that of Egypt, but exposed to the rude 



[ 23 ] 

assaults of this latitude would quickly disintegrate, 
unless artificially protected. The climate of Egypt 
is perfect for preserving her ancient monuments. I 
remember visiting the tomb of Ti, where the pig- 
ments seemed as fresh as when they were applied 
to the interior decoration of the tomb four thousand 
years ago. One could clearly see where the artist 
had made his sketch and had not followed with the 
color, for what reason will probably forever remain a 
mystery. 

This tomb was underground, in the sand, and 
absolutely protected from the dampness; and of frost 
there was none. It is no doubt true that the Par- 
thenon would be as perfect to-day as it was in the 
time of Phidias if the hand of the spoiler could have 
been stayed, and the Elgin Marbles would no doubt 
endure as long under the sunny Grecian skies as they 
will among the treasures of the British Museum. 
The Colosseum in Rome could easily have resisted 
the elements of nature, but could not escape the 
cupidity of men. Upon the general subject of anti- 
quarian research, it has been said in our proceed- 
ings that, whoever is sufficiently thoughtful to pre- 
serve these footprints of passing occurrences which 
are apt to be lightly regarded until they are lost, 
and which, at every tide in the affairs of men, are 
swept into oblivion, may be sure of the gratitude 
of posterity. Knowledge of industrial arts and the 
customs of domestic and social life, in periods no 
more remote than the Middle Ages, is not derived 
from dignified documents or elaborate literature. 



[ 24 ] 

but is gathered from verbal and pictorial represen- 
tations of the humblest pretensions, or picked out 
of pieces of tapestry, or the ornaments of illumi- 
nated manuscripts, otherwise of little value. 

Not only has the discovery of ancient manuscripts 
made possible the making of history extending to 
very ancient times, but the quest often becomes of 
romantic interest. This cannot be better illustrated 
than in the discovery by Tischendorf of the Sinaitic 
manuscript in the Convent of St. Catherine at the 
foot of Mt. Sinai. As he tells the story, when he vis- 
ited the library of the monastery in 1844, he saw in 
the middle of the great hall a large basket full of 
old parchments, and the librarian told him that two 
heaps of papers like them had already been com- 
mitted to the flames. Finding among them a con- 
siderable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Tes- 
tament in Greek more ancient than he had ever seen 
before, he possessed himself of forty-three which 
were destined for the fire, and made an unsuccess- 
ful attempt to secure the remainder. So determined 
was he to possess them that he returned to the con- 
vent nine years later, convinced from a fragment 
containing eleven short lines of Genesis that the 
manuscript originally included the entire Old Tes- 
tament, but he was unsuccessful in finding further 
traces of the manuscript of 1844. He returned again 
to the convent in 1859, when, almost by accident, 
he discovered in the cell of the steward, not only the 
fragments which fifteen years before he had taken 
out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old 



[ 25 ] 

Testament, the New Testament complete, and, in 
addition, the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the 
Pastor of Hermas. He knew that he held in his hand 
the most precious Biblical treasure in existence. 
For two centuries search had been made in vain for 
the first part of the original Greek of the Epistle of 
Barnabas. He was permitted to carry the Sinaitic 
Bible to St. Petersburg to be copied, and later Ox- 
ford and Cambridge conferred upon him their high- 
est academic degree. ' ' I would rather, ' ' said the old 
man, — "I would rather have discovered this Si- 
naitic manuscript than the Koh-i-Noor of the Queen 
of England." Contributions of this sort, of greater or 
less importance, are constantly being made through 
the labors of investigators. Within the present year. 
Professor Scheil, of Paris, the eminent Assy riologist, 
has discovered a cuneiform tablet which establishes 
the order and names of five dynasties earlier than 
2300 B.C. 

A subject to which much space is given in the 
proceedings is that of the origin of our population. 
Attention is drawn to the fact that the theories upon 
this subject had fallen somewhat into disrepute be- 
cause of the absurdities of those who tried to prove 
too much and who warped and colored facts to suit 
their needs, and that the aboriginal remains at the 
west had often been misconceived and misrepre- 
sented in the endeavor to account for them upon the 
supposition that they were the work of an offshoot 
from some European or Asiatic nation more or less 
civilized. One hypothesis, elaborately argued and 



[ 26 ] 

tenaciously clung to, was that the lost tribes of Israel 
had found refuge in America. The question was re- 
garded as an open one until after the middle of the 
century, fertile in the elements of controversy, and 
one which was commended to the Society for serious 
consideration. It was suggested that the facilities 
of access from Asia are certainly greater than those 
from Europe, and that the same winds that bore the 
Japanese junk to the neighborhood of the Columbia 
River could have carried thither the fleet of Kublai 
Khan, described by Marco Polo as having disap- 
peared in a mysterious manner on a voyage of con- 
quest against Japan and believed by many writers to 
have been driven to this continent. In the eighteenth 
century some French philosophers suggested the 
idea that the aborigines of this continent were possi- 
bly the primitive race of mankind. Our speculative 
statesman, Thomas Jefferson, was disposed to adopt 
this opinion, on the ground that so many distinct 
vocabularies existed among the natives, while among 
the Asiatic tribes having a similar grammatical re- 
gimen, no such extreme diversity was found. 

Mr. Haven, for so many years the accomplished 
librarian of the Society, issued in the early fifties, 
under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, an 
elaborate paper upon the Archaeology of the United 
States, with opinions respecting vestiges of anti- 
quity. It is no doubt due to his profound interest in 
this subject that the attention of the Society was so 
pointedly directed to it. He had been for many years 
of the opinion that the prehistoric forms of civil- 



[ 27 ] 

ization on this continent were purely of native origin. 
At about this time, under the auspices of the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society, Charles Deane edited 
the long lost manuscript journal of William Brad- 
ford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, the original 
of which was later to be returned to Massachusetts 
through the efforts of another of our members. 

At the annual meeting on October 21,1862, refer- 
ence was made to the close of the half-century of 
the life of the Society, but the commemoration of 
the event was deferred, as the report says, to "hap- 
pier and more peaceful times." "We are too much 
absorbed in the thoughts and cares and anxieties 
of the present and near future for a patient retouch- 
ing of the monuments of the past. The click of the 
hammer and of the chisel are lost in the din of arms. 
Old Mortality himself would be startled from his 
labor of love by the cry of an afflicted country." 

At the annual meeting in 1863, the address upon 
the half-century commemoration was prepared by 
Dr. William Jenks, D.D., who delivered the ad- 
dress just fifty years before, in 1813, and was one 
of the four survivors of the original members ; the 
other three being Governor Levi Lincoln, Josiah 
Quincy, and Dr. John Green. 

In 1866 the Society was associated with the 
establishment by George Peabody of a museum 
and professorship of archaeology and ethnology in 
connection with Harvard College by the appoint- 
ment of Stephen Salisbury as one of the trustees, 
his successors to be the future presidents of the 



[ 28 ] 

Society. This endowment was said to be "the first 
instance in this country of the establishment of an 
independent provision for the promotion of inves- 
tigation in an important branch of the study of 
history." 

The year 1868 is notable as that of the death 
of Hon. Levi Lincoln, the last survivor of the char- 
ter members. He graduated from Harvard College 
in 1802; was a member of the state senate; and 
in 1814 of the House of Representatives, in which 
he prepared and offered the protest of the minority 
against the act authorizing the Hartford Conven- 
tion ; was a member of the convention of 1820 to 
revise the state constitution, and one of the commis- 
sioners under the act for the separation of Maine, 
to make partition and apportionment of the public 
property; speaker of the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives, lieutenant-governor, associate jus- 
tice of the Supreme Judicial Court, governor of 
the Commonwealth, member of Congress, councillor 
of this Society. 

Although the subject has been referred to in a 
general way, the first direct reference I have found 
in the proceedings to "Darwinism" by name was 
in 1868. This seems rather strange in view of the 
fact that the ' ' Origin of Species ' ' was published 
in 1859. Darwin had begun his journal as early as 
July, 1837. His faith was then shaken in the fixity 
of species. He made an abstract of his facts in 1844, 
and showed it to his friend, Sir Joseph Hooker, the 
botanist, who, with Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, 



[ 29 ] 

knew of his labors. Alfred Russel Wallace, a cele- 
brated naturalist at work in the East Indian archi- 
pelago, reached independendy the same conclusion 
as to natural selection. Their joint production, to- 
gether with a full statement of the facts, was pre- 
sented to the Linnaean Society of London, July 1, 
1858. Darwin said that if he could convince Lyell, 
Hooker, and Huxley, he could wait for the rest. This 
subject was under discussion at the annual meeting 
in 1868, when Dr. Ellis said that he had removed 
from his shelves five volumes of Sir Charles Lyell's 
geology because Lyell had abandoned his "prin- 
ciples" and asserted his new system with equal 
assurance. 

The variety of subjects considered at the meet- 
ings may be interestingly illustrated by turning to 
that discussed at the annual meeting in 1871, when 
Charles Sumner, in commenting upon the report 
of the Council, suggesting the idea that the Pacific 
would be our Mediterranean Sea, said that the unity 
of European capital renders it doubtful if the United 
States ever regains its power on the Atlantic Ocean, 
and it must improve its opportunity in the other 
direction. The Pacific is essentially ours, and it is of 
vast importance that all our rights there be jealously 
guarded and defended. In this connection, he said 
that he anticipated a time when the Sandwich Islands 
would become a part of the jurisdiction of this coun- 
try, as our half-way house to China and Japan. In 
this view, the Pacific, he continued, is to be to us the 
great middle sea of the world. He spoke also of the 



[ 30 ] 

high degree of intelHgence of the Japanese, and the 
ease and industry with which they apply themselves 
to the acquisition of knowledge, and of the great 
importance of developing fully our international 
relations with that people. 

Our members have always had a prominent part 
in the administration of the affairs of the state and 
nation, and through them the Society has been 
closely identified with the political history of the 
country. Isaiah Thomas was twenty-one years old 
at the time of the Boston massacre, which has been 
designated as "the first act in the drama of the 
American Revolution," and his influential part in 
that great event need not be repeated here. In the 
War of 1812 the influence of some of our members 
was hostile to the policy of the government. Josiah 
Quincy was the leader of the Federalist party in 
Massachusetts, and vigorous in his denunciation of 
the war. Webster, too, opposed it, but more temper- 
ately. Perhaps as striking an instance as any of the 
influence of a member of the Society upon the politi- 
cal movements of his time is that of Charles Allen, 
who was chosen a delegate from the Worcester dis- 
trict to the Whig national convention of 1848. It 
was there that he said: "The Whig party is here 
and this day dissolved." At the meeting called in 
Worcester upon his return, his brother, the Rev. 
George Allen, presented a resolution which was not 
only adopted there, but at nearly every other Free 
Soil meeting held that year in Massachusetts, and 
became a battle-cry throughout the country: "i?^- 



[ 31 ] 

solved^ That Massachusetts wears no chains, and 
spurns all bribes. That she goes now and M-ill ever 
go for Free Soil and Free Men, for Free Lips and 
a Free Press, for a Free Land and a Free World." 
The Society owes much to the services of its libra- 
rians. Isaiah Thomas had charge of the library and 
cabinet until the October meeting in 1814, when 
Samuel Jennison was chosen, and served until 1826. 
Mr. Jennison, while not college bred, was a learned 
man and an able writer. He was a member of many 
literary and historical societies and a large collector 
of biographical material, much of which is in the 
possession of the Society. He was succeeded by Wil- 
liam Lincoln, a son of the first Levi Lincoln. He 
graduated from Harvard College in 1822, and prac- 
tised law in Worcester, was associated with Chris- 
topher C. Baldwin in publishing the "Worcester 
Magazine and Historical Journal, ' ' was editor of the 
"National Aegis," and under appointment from 
Governor Edward Everett, edited the journals of 
the Provincial Congress, committees of safety, and 
county conventions for the years 1774 and 1775. His 
most important work was the history of Worcester 
from its first settlement in 1664 to 1836. Christopher 
C. Baldwin, succeeding Mr. Lincoln, became act- 
ing librarian at the October meeting in 1827, having 
been elected a member at the same time, together 
with Charles Allen, Emory Washburn, and Jared 
Sparks. In May, 1830, Mr. Baldwin moved his law 
office to Barre. He said that there were too many 
lawyers in Worcester, being above twenty, either 



[ 32 ] 

to make the profession profitable or reputable ; that 
he only made $500 a year, and that the business was 
growing less. "Many," said he, "go out a-may- 
ing and more to see the girls." He moved from 
Barre to Sutton, but returning to Worcester, again 
became librarian, April 1, 1832, and held the office 
until his death in August, 1835. During his absence 
the office was filled by Samuel M. Burnside, Esq. 
The Society is indebted to Mr. Baldwin for many 
of its rare publications, and particularly for its large 
and valuable collection of American newspapers. 
He had a strong taste for the pursuits of the anti- 
quary and genealogist. In writing to the Rev. Aaron 
Bancroft in 1832, then on a visit to Cincinnati, he 
asked him to interest himself in the mounds in the 
Ohio Valley, and to procure, if he could, a collection 
of the "skulls of the unknown, forgotten people 
who built the mounds and forts and inhabited the 
country before the present race of Indians." 

In 1834 he sought to secure from Temple Cut- 
ler, son of Manasseh Cutler, the records and papers 
of the Ohio Company, and wrote: "Their preser- 
vation will identify the name and memory of your 
father with the original formation of one of the most 
powerful states of the Union." He had decided 
views as to the library, and on one occasion said ; 
"There were very few objects of curiosity or an- 
tiquity in the collection. This is correct taste. A 
library should contain nothing but books, coins, 
statuary and pictures. I admit now and then an 
antiquity should be admitted. But how absurd to 



[ 33 ] 

pile up old bureaus and chests, and stuif them with 
old coats and hats and high-heeled shoes ! The true 
history of all these things is handed down by paint- 
ing. And besides, if they are once received, there 
will be attempts making to gull somebody with the 
' Shield of Achilles ' or ' Mambrino's helmet. ' I have 
discouraged the sending them to the Antiquarian 
hall for this reason." 

Mr. Baldwin did not confine his labors to the 
library, but took great interest in the grounds as 
well. With his own hands he set out hundreds 
of trees about the old building on Summer Street, 
most of which he dug in the woods and carried to 
their destination upon his back. "They will," said 
he, "afford a comfortable shade for my successor, 
if I should not live to enjoy it myself." In the work 
of beautifying the grounds he had some assistance. 
On one occasion he writes : "Yesterday, His Excel- 
lency Governor Lincoln came with several men to 
lay the grounds in front of the Antiquarian Hall. 
He worked very diligently two days and made some 
very acceptable alterations. The thermometer stood 
at 91°, and, judging from the profuse perspiration 
upon His Excellency's forehead, I have no question 
but that he had a very warm time of it." 

Through Mr. Baldwin's diary we get an ac- 
quaintance with the domestic affairs of the Soci- 
ety. On one occasion he writes: "Isaiah Thomas, 
LL.D., calls at my office, above 80 and yet healthy 
and vigorous ; ' ' and on another : ' ' Assist Isaiah 
Thomas, LL.D., president of the A. A. S., in mak- 



[ 34 ] 

ing an account of books given to the Society within 
the year." The meetings of the Council were then 
held on the last Wednesday of each month. Mr. 
Baldwin mildly complains that while the meetings 
are very pleasant, ' ' the Council spends too much 
time in talking about politics." 

On the last day of 1834 he sent the following 
note to "Sam Jennison, Esq. If not at the Bank, at 
his new seat in Pearl street." 

My Dear Sir : 

One of my spokes is so out of kilter that I have 
requested the company of the council at my room 
at my boarding house, this evening at 7 o'clock, 
where I shall be very happy to see you. I have not 
ventured out of doors since Saturday, and I did not 
feel up to breaking snow paths to-day. 

Your decrepid friend. 

Kit, the Antiquary. 
Last day of l8j^. 

In attending the May meeting in Boston, in 1835, 
he took the stage to Westborough and thence by 
railroad to Boston. He writes : "We were all invited 
to dine with Mr. Winthrop, president of the Society. 
The Society always dine with him, and he gives 
a prime entertainment." 

Mr. Baldwin died August 20, 1835, as the result 
of an accident in the upsetting of a stage near Nor- 
wich, Ohio. On October 23 of that year William 
Lincoln, his close personal friend, dehvered an ad- 
dress upon his character and services before the So- 



[ 35 ] 

ciety in the Unitarian meeting-house, which stood 
then, as the building which replaced it now stands, 
south of the Court House. 

Mr . Baldwin was succeeded by Maturin L . Fisher, 
acting librarian for two years, who then moved to 
Iowa. Samuel F. Haven was elected in October, 
1837, and entered upon his duties in April of the 
following year. He was elected to membership at 
the October meeting. He continued in this office until 
April, 1881, when he resigned, and during this 
period of forty-three years his reports form a most 
important part of the proceedings. The first report, 
made in October, 1838, contains the statement that, 
"on commencing his duties, the present librarian 
found himself in the midst of a library almost over- 
flowing with the results of the diligence of his pre- 
decessor and of public and private liberalities." 

Commenting upon the work of the Society, he 
said: "Our society may not itself engage in the 
composition of History or Genealogy, in the tech- 
nical sense of these pursuits, but it is called upon 
to furnish means and facilities for its accomplish- 
ment by others. This it may fairly be claimed it 
has been doing, if quietly and economically, yet in 
a diligent and liberal way, after the example set by 
its founder. In two departments of collection — those 
of Newspapers and Pamphlets — Dr. Thomas took 
the precedence in this country. Such fugitive pro- 
ductions were hardly thought worthy of preserva- 
tion in public libraries before his time. They are 
troublesome to handle and expensive to prepare for 



[ 36 ] 

permanent keeping. But for the binding fund pro- 
vided by our present president they would be an 
unmanageable burden. As it is, they are among the 
choicest of our treasures. ' ' 

And on another occasion : "Its proper office is to 
keep the fire ever burning upon its altar, from which 
a torch may be kindled for every particular enter- 
prise, and by which light may be shed over every 
field of investigation — to cherish the spirit of re- 
search by precept and example, and to bestow upon 
every honest effort the most candid and liberal con- 
sideration." 

On another occasion he said : "Antiquity is just 
now in fashion, and both associated and individual 
collectors of memorials of the past are multiplying 
everywhere. As archaeology has become one of the 
most popular of the sciences, the term archaeologi- 
cal or its equivalent is often added to the name and 
style of societies organized for very different pur- 
poses. The word Antiquary is losing its curiosity- 
shop associations, and is gaining the prestige of 
signifying a scientific student of the origin and prim- 
itive history of the human race. When will the word 
Antiquarian, used as a noun, be abolished? It has 
the sanction of Gibbon, the historian, but scholars 
should be more exact in their use of the terms. 
When the late Mr. Crabb Robinson and a lady were 
once riding in the same carriage, the lady chanced 
to say: ' Oh, Mr. Robinson, you are an antiquarian. ' 
'Madam,' he replied, gravely, 'I am a noun and 
not an adjective. An antiquary, if you please.' " 



[ 37 ] 

The large variety of subjects which Mr. Haven 
treated in his reports have been briefly summarized 
by one of our associates as follows : ' ' American 
Archaeology and Exploration; Mexican Antiqui- 
ties; Mound-Builders; Dighton Rock; the Ante- 
historic Period of the Old World; Lake Dwellings; 
the Stone Age and Flint Implements; the Improved 
Method of Cataloguing; Tribute to Humboldt; Ac- 
count of the Founder of the Society, his services dur- 
ing the Revolution, as printer, as historian of print- 
ing and as collector; the Characters and Writings of 
the Mathers; the Brinley Library; Dr. Bentley's 
Papers; Broadsides; the Literature of the Civil War; 
Examination of the Popham Colony; Our Early 
Magazine Literature ; and Lost Historical Papers." 

Mr. Haven was succeeded by Mr. Edmund M. 
Barton, now librarian emeritus, of whose devotion 
to the interests of the Society through his many years 
of faithful service we all have personal knowledge, 
and for whom we wish a serene and happy old age. 

While the membership of the Society is national 
and international, it has been deeply influenced in its 
activities by the local members. In the report of the 
Council in 1849, Mr. Haven said: "It is clear that 
the efficiency of an Institution must greatly depend 
upon its local strength. If the central machinery is 
wanting in power, the motion of the distant wheels 
will be feeble and irregular." 

Mention has already been made of the men who 
organized the Society, and the list is a distinguished 
one. Until his death in 1 83 1 , Isaiah Thomas was the 



[ 38 ] 

dominating force, in large part paying its expenses. 
He was succeeded in the presidency by Thomas Lin- 
dell Winthrop, a graduate of Harvard, state sena- 
tor, lieutenant-governor, member of many learned 
societies, of whose relations to this Society Dr. Jenks 
said he ' ' was ever punctually and faithfully devoted 
to its interests even to the close of life." Following 
him was the gifted Everett, clergyman, member 
of Congress, governor. Minister to the Court of St. 
James, president of Harvard College, Secretary of 
State, successor to John Davis in the Senate of 
the United States, statesman, orator, scholar. He, in 
turn, was succeeded by John Davis, graduate of 
Yale in the class of 1812, lawyer, member of Con- 
gress, governor. United States Senator. 

Stephen Salisbury was president from 1854 until 
his death in 1884, and up to that time, by general 
consent, was accorded a place second only to that 
of Mr. Thomas in the value of his services and 
amount of his benefactions. Mr. Salisbury occupied 
a distinguished place in this community. He was not 
only a man of education, social prominence, and 
large affairs, but an excellent classical scholar. His 
frequent participation in the proceedings is marked 
by sound sense and sound learning. 

The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, then a resident 
of Worcester, was elected to the Society in 1847, 
and from that time until his death, a period of 
upwards of sixty years, was a constant contributor 
to the proceedings, and for a short time served as 
president. His informal contributions had a peculiar 



[ 39 ] 

charm. Characteristic of these was the following, 
made several years ago : ' ' When the great fire took 
place and swept away the most of commercial Bos- 
ton, our friends at the Old South meeting-house 
had a valuable piece of property, and they sold it 
for $400,000, and that $400,000 had to be raised 
some way, and we were all very enthusiastic in our 
wishes to preserve the old meeting-house. I met 
Henry Longfellow in the street one day, and I said : 
'Longfellow, you have got to help in preserving the 
meeting-house.' He said: 'All right, how much do 
you want? ' I said : 'How much? I want you to write 
us a poem.' He was very good natured about it, and 
said: 'If the spirit moves, I will write the poem.' I 
was not quite satisfied with that. I said : 'The spirit 
must move, it has got to move, and I hope it will 
move. ' And we parted. That week Longfellow wrote 
his ballad on the French fleet, and according to me, 
it is the best American ballad written. It is ascribed 
to Thomas Prince, the minister of the Old South." 
Senator Hoar was elected to membership in 1853, 
and was a constant contributor to the proceedings, 
and president for a time. I think that perhaps as 
good an illustration as any of his fondness for the 
pursuits of the antiquary is to be found in the return 
of the Bradford manuscript to this Commonwealth 
in 1897, by the Bishop of London. Said the bishop 
to Mr. Hoar: "I did not know you cared anything 
about it." "Why," said Mr. Hoar, in reply, "if 
there were in existence in England a history of King 
Alfred's reign for thirty years, written by his o^vn 



[ 40 ] 

hand, it would not be more precious in the eyes of 
Engh'shmen than this manuscript is to us." 

Stephen Salisbury, Jr., was for years an active 
and highly useful member of the Society. He was 
deeply interested in the literature of Central Amer- 
ica, and the results, direct and indirect, of his visits 
to Yucatan are to be found in the proceedings. He 
was president from 1887 until his death in 1905. 
The gifts to the Society of the father were exceeded 
only by those of the son. 

It so happens that the oldest of our associates in 
membership and the oldest in years are both resi- 
dents of Worcester : 

Nathaniel Paine, born in 1834, bearing the hon- 
ored name of a charter member, elected to member- 
ship in 1860, treasurer for forty-five years, member 
of the Council since 1863, a frequent contributor to 
the proceedings, recipient of an honorary degree 
from Harvard University in recognition of his 
accomplishments as an antiquary. 

William Addison Smith, born in 1824, while 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson still lived, grad- 
uated from Harvard College in 1 843 , associated with 
the Society since 1867, of which maybe said, as was 
once said of the British Scientific Association, that 
membership seems to bring with it an assurance of 
long life. 

In his address in King's Chapel in October, 1814, 
Dr. Abiel Holmes said: "Antiquity, far from being 
a rival, is but a handmaid of history. Her office is 
more humble, her province more restricted. The 



[ 41 ] 

one furnishes a few of the valuable materials with 
which the other constructs her superb edifice." 

At the moment, I can think of no better illustra- 
tion of the functions of the antiquary and the histo- 
rian than is to be found in William Hickling Pres- 
cott, an early member, whose attainments in the 
former field are excelled only by those in the latter. 
In writing the "Conquest of Mexico," he tells us of 
the rich store of new material which he found in 
the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, consist- 
ing of instructions of the court, military and pri- 
vate journals, correspondence of the great actors in 
the scenes, legal instruments, contemporary chroni- 
cles, and the like, drawn from all the principal places 
in the extensive colonial empire of Spain, as well 
as from the public archives in the peninsula; and in 
the preparation of "Philip the Second" he sought 
his materials in the public archives in the great 
European capitals and in private collections, in 
which work he was aided by Edward Everett. The 
easy access to these treasures is in happy contrast 
with the exclusiveness of the Fan family in China at 
that time, whose library contained upwards of fifty 
thousand volumes, of whom it was said that each 
member of the family had a key to his own lock, so 
that the library could be opened only by the consent 
of all and in the presence of all. 

The immediate and peculiar design of this Soci- 
ety has been declared to be to discover the antiqui- 
ties of our continent, but the broader purpose is a 
desire to contribute to the advancement of the arts 



[ 42 ] 

and sciences, as well as to assist the researches 
of future historians. In these fields of research and 
discovery there has been an enormous development 
during the past one hundred years. In 1800 about 
one-fifth of the earth's land surface was known: at 
the present time less than one-tenth is unexplored; 
and with the discovery of the North and South Poles, 
the latter within the present year, practically the en- 
tire surface of the earth is now known to us. Until 
almost the beginning of the nineteenth century, it 
was the general belief that man and the whole uni- 
verse began to exist several thousand years ago; that 
everything was created out of hand, and has re- 
mained unchanged ever since. The words: "In the 
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," 
and the date 4004 b.c. as the starting-point, were 
accepted literally. 

The fundamental idea of geology, as it has come 
to be understood, is the evolution of the earth 
through millions of years. We can no longer speak 
with scientific precision of the "everlasting hills;" 
we know that nothing is permanent; that every- 
thing is subject to continuous change, nothing is at 
rest. Indeed, it is said that in every stick and stone 
the particles which compose the atoms flash through 
over a hundred thousand miles a second. The mod- 
ern science of geology enables us to fix the remote 
time of the birth of the mountains, to trace their de- 
velopment and decay through the ages, and to find 
their remains in the folded structure of the rocks. 
As Lamarck, the celebrated French naturalist, once 



[ 43 ] 

said: "For Nature, time is nothing. It is never a 
difficulty, she ahvays has it at her disposal ; and it 
is for her the means by which she has accomplished 
the greatest as well as the least results. For all the 
evolution of the earth and of living beings, Nature 
needs but three elements — space, time, and matter. ' ' 

After the great antiquity of the earth and its ori- 
gin and development by natural processes had been 
generally accepted, man was believed to have ap- 
peared only a few thousand years ago, and it was 
comparatively recently — little more than fifty years 
ago, as has been said — that Darwin's "Origin of 
Species" prepared the way for the now generally 
accepted theory of man's origin by a natural pro- 
cess of evolution. 

Astronomy, the oldest of sciences, comprehend- 
ing all matter of the universe which lies outside of 
the earth's atmosphere, has made great advances 
during the century; a science cultivated eight thou- 
sand years ago in the valley of the Nile, the Tigris, 
and the Euphrates, it has, through the aid of recent 
discoveries in physics and chemistry and celestial 
photography, bridged the distances of space. The 
discovery and development of spectrum analysis 
during the nineteenth century has enlarged enor- 
mously the opportunities for celestial inquiry, and 
put us upon terms of intimacy with our sister planets 
of the solar system. 

Bacteriology has revolutionized our views of fer- 
mentation, and marks the pathway of our physi- 
cians and surgeons, and our sanitary engineers. In 



[ 44 ] 

physics the nineteenth century has witnessed the 
greatest advance since the time of Gahleo and New- 
ton. The eclipses of Jupiter's moons and observa- 
tions upon the positions of the stars as influenced by 
the motion of the earth in its orbit have furnished 
a measure for the velocity of light. Biology has de- 
monstrated that plants and animals are built up of 
cells, or of minute elementary organisms and micro- 
organisms, which are recognized as the cause of 
widely distributed processes of putrefaction, of fer- 
mentation, and of the diseases of plants and animals. 
The less men knew, the more ready they were to 
accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. 
Pasteur proved by scientific methods that, for mi- 
crobes, too, the saying is fulfilled: Omni vivum e 
vivo — life comes only from life. 

It is well within the truth to say that in therapeu- 
tics, medical and surgical, physiology, pathology, 
and hygiene, greater progress has been made dur- 
ing the last century than during the previous two 
thousand years. The discovery of the eflfect of vac- 
cination, of general anaesthetics, the adoption of an- 
tiseptic and aseptic methods in surgery, the develop- 
ment of modern bacteriology, and the demonstration 
that some diseases are due to the growth of micro- 
organisms are enough to justify the assertion. 

What, then, I ask, is the function of this Society 
in this wonderful age? It is, as it always has been, 
to discover the truth in whatever field we may in- 
vestigate, and to make it available for use by our fel- 
low-men ; to preserve correct records of facts upon 



[ 45 ] 

which future chroniclers may base their conclusions. 
' ' Science seems to me, ' ' said Huxley, ' ' to teach , 
in the highest and strongest manner, the great truth 
which is embodied in the Christian conception of 
entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before 
the fact as a little child ; be prepared to give up 
every preconceived notion ; follow humbly wherever 
and to whatsoever abysses nature leads, or you shall 
learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content 
and peace of mind, ' ' he said, ' ' since I have resolved 
at all risks to do this." He tells us that he has sub- 
ordinated ambition for scientific fame to the diffusion 
among men of that enthusiasm for truth, that fanati- 
cism of veracity, which is a greater possession than 
much learning, a nobler gift than the power of in- 
creasing knowledge. Ours should be the spirit of 
the dervish in the Arabian tale, who "did not hesi- 
tate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their 
load of jewels and gold while he retained the casket 
of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to be- 
hold at one glance all the hidden riches of the uni- 
verse. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no 
external advantage is to be compared with that 
purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us 
to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental 
world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval 
dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored 
mines." 



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